


Flying Just Means Not Hitting the Ground When You're Falling

by misura



Category: Jumper (2008)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, M/M, Post-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2017-10-14 05:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>It goes by fast, this life they're living, never needing to wait in line, to take time to get somewhere they want to be.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Flying Just Means Not Hitting the Ground When You're Falling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).



> originally posted July 2010
> 
> prompt: _David/Griffin, on the run_

Griffin's always been a bit of a crazy bastard - full of stories about places he's been, people he's known that are dead now - so, really, it doesn't surprise David he gets to Roland in the end.

It does surprise David how free of guilt he feels; he's left Roland stuck in a cave, high on a mountaintop in the middle of nowhere with no food, no water and no way of contacting anyone to come and get him out of there, but the second thing he's thinking as he sees Roland's dead body is: _'at least I didn't kill him'_ \- as if his hands are any cleaner than Griffin's simply because he didn't do the actual deed.

The first thing he thinks is: _'I'm glad he's dead'_ and he feels a stab of something at that, the beginning of a thought that _someone_ surely would be disappointed in him if he were to confess that thought to them, only then it occurs to him that his Dad's alive in spite of Roland and his Mom barely cares enough about him to not want to see him dead, and Millie is - well, Millie's _gone_.

It's just him and Griffin now, and David's not even sure if they're friends.

"You done looking now?" Griffin asks, as if he's been waiting here just for David - and maybe he has.

There's a bit of blood on Griffin's shirt, and David doesn't think it's his, although it might be. Even without all his fancy equipment, and even after two days without food or water, Roland would still be a dangerous man. It's why David has waited so long to come back here with supplies.

He's not sure anymore now of what he planned to do, if he'd really been going to keep Roland a prisoner up here, unharmed yet unable to harm anyone else. Griffin's spared him the choice.

"Yeah," he says, dropping the bag.

"Got a drink in there?" Griffin looks but doesn't touch - all nice and polite and rather unlike Griffin, even if David doesn't think he's actually going to be hearing words like _'please'_ and _'thank you'_. "Kind of thirsty over here." He's not sure if he'd really _want_ Griffin to thank him.

"Yeah, sure - have a look." There's still a lot of money in there, too, but David's not too worried about that; it's not like Griffin can't get his own if he wants it.

"Thanks, brother." Griffin doesn't even comment on the money, just pulls out a can of beer and then, after a moment's thought, another one which he tosses to David.

David catches it, gets the general idea when Griffin lifts his can, smiling.

He's not sure what they're drinking to - maybe to Roland's death, or the rekindling of a friendship they may never have had, or another limited run of _Marvel Team-Up_ , or nothing. The beer is lukewarm and cheap and the view was magnificient the first few dozens of times David's been up here but Griffin's looking as close to happy as David's ever seen him, so David guesses he might as well enjoy the moment and not worry too much about what happens next.

It's what he's been doing for close to eight years; he hasn't quite lost the knack for it yet.

 

Griffin gets rid of Roland's body, and David is reminded of that saying about true friends.

He still doesn't really expect Griffin to show up again all by himself, or to get a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Got any plans for today?"

David thinks he could be casual about this, let bygones be bygones the way Griffin seems willing enough to do. "Can I ask you something first?" There's a reason he hasn't been to see his Dad, not after he's seen his mother married to another man and with a daughter.

Some things are better left alone.

"Ask away," Griffin says. "No promise I'll answer."

"Back when I - when you - " David licks his lips, trying to find a way to say _'when I kind of pissed you off badly enough that you wanted to kill me'_ without actually putting it quite so bluntly. They both lived in the end, after all, even if David knows there were moments he wasn't exactly being careful about not hurting Griffin - and rather more moments when he knows Griffin wasn't the least bit concerned for _his_ health. "Are we cool?"

"Don't know about you, but I think it's pretty warm in here." Griffin chuckles, then slaps him on the shoulder again. "David, man, lighten up. Right now, we're cooler than the polar circle."

David doesn't have the courage to ask if it's because of Roland. He kind of wants to forget Roland ever existed, or that his Mom's one of the people who want to kill him just because he's been born with superpowers, or that Griffin's probably not going to stick around for more than a few days or so.

 

Two weeks later, they're in Tokyo again, in some nightclub with loud music and girls that don't remind David the least bit of Millie - all slim and sexy and wearing clothes that only leave to his imagination what he might _do_ if he gets them off, rather than what he might _see_.

"Like what you see? Good. Gonna do something about it before I die of old age over here?" Griffin claims he's had his heart broken by his Tokyo girlfriend - David prudently didn't ask which one, given that Griffin seems to have at least five in this city alone.

David has fooled around, too, of course; it's not like he's spent the eight years before he met Millie again living like a monk, but he's got a sort of 'been there, done that, didn't stick around for the t-shirt' feeling about it now. It was fun, for a while.

Could be fun again, maybe, for a while. "I don't know." Griffin's drink's got a little pink umbrella in it.

"Are you pissed or what?" Griffin grins. He's probably far, far more drunk than David - or at least he's drunk more. "Never mind then - you'd only make an ass of yourself if you tried anything anyway."

"Do you ever - I don't know. Want something more?"

"More'n look? Gotta stay kind of sober for that." Implying Griffin did not intend to pick up a new girlfriend here, or even a one-night stand.

David wonders if Griffin's really only dragged him here so that _David_ can pick up some stranger he'll probably never see again after tomorrow, assuming he sticks around until then. It goes by fast, this life they're living, never needing to wait in line, to take time to get somewhere they want to be.

It goes by fast, and yet the number of things they pack in a single day is more than most people can pack in a week, or even a month.

"More than people who you're only going to see if you happen to remember their name and where they live." Griffin's got a new lair, and David's been considering getting some sort of place of his own, but what he wants is a _home_ and he thinks that maybe for people like him and Griffin, that's not really a possibility. "More than living from day to day. More than just having fun."

Griffin snorts. "It ain't fun if you're not having any, brother."

"We could be - I don't know - _doing_ things." David remembers Griffin telling him jumpers aren't heroes, that they don't do things like saving the girl, but, well, he _did_ save the girl, in the end, and then Griffin killed the bad guy.

"You're crazy," Griffin tells him. "I love you."

"Now who's being pissed?" David asks, because he's picked up bits of British slang by now and he sees no reason not to use them, when they fit. "Come on, let's go find an empty hotel room."

They pay sometimes - play that whole game of rich tourists, used to luxury and to throwing money around like it's nothing (and it kind of is, to them), but David's tired and Griffin's clearly had a few drinks too many, so tonight, he's just going to make a few jumps around to find them a nice empty room with a big bed to sleep on.

 

A month later, they're on Fiji and David still hasn't really found a way to put into words what he wants.

He thinks Griffin's getting bored with him by now; he's mentioned on several occasions (and rather pointedly, or so it seemed to David) that he doesn't play well with others.

"I can't believe you don't know how to surf." It seemed a fun idea to try and teach him, even if David knows that just because he knows how to surf (and knows it rather well, if he does say so himself), that doesn't mean he can teach it to someone else.

Griffin shrugs. "Not precisely a vital skill, is it?" David would kind of like to think he looks a bit nervous - there's some great waves today. "So what do I do with this thing here again?"

David wonders if Griffin's really that forgetful, or if he simply can't be bothered to pay attention when David explains the whole thing to him again - it's not _complicated_ , exactly, and given that Griffin's a jumper, it's not like there's any chance of his drowning if he gets it wrong or if he makes a wrong move, but ... David kind of wants Griffin to enjoy this. Not-drowning probably isn't going to cut it.

 

They never meet any other jumpers. They have a few run-ins with paladins - nothing they can't handle, and only three times when it gets ugly enough for Griffin to need to go and feed the sharks, but David feels more and more like Griffin's the only person in the world he can really connect to.

After Tokyo, the topic of girlfriends or one-night-stands is never brought up again. David's not sure what that means; he thinks he'd noticed if Griffin would sneak off in the middle of the night to get a bit of fun without David around. It's not as if he'd _mind_. Just because _David_ 's not interested in things like that doesn't mean he doesn't want _Griffin_ not to get any, either.

"Penny for your thoughts."

They're having breakfast in Paris, which is rather a nice city to wake up in, except for the part where everyone seems to want you to address them in French, which David speaks the way he speaks Italian, Russian and Chinese - that is to say: poorly. (He's been working on his Japanese, even though a lot of people there speak English, too.) Griffin speaks French the way he seems to speak every language of every place they've ever jumped to: fluently, if with a slight accent (or so he tells David).

"When's the last time you had sex?"

"Getting kind of personal, aren't you?" Griffin doesn't actually choke on his coffee though.

David shrugs, tries to sound and act casual; they're friends, they're both guys; they can talk about stuff like this. "Just wondering."

"Yeah? Well, keep wondering, brother." It's been a while since David's heard that tone of voice from Griffin - or at least, since he's heard that tone of voice when Griffin was talking to _him_.

"Didn't mean to offend you," David mumbles, because he'll be damned if he's going to apologize, and Griffin's never been one for apologies, anyway.

"That's your problem, you know? You never mean anything at all," Griffin says.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" David demands.

Griffin rises, tosses some French banknotes onto the table. "Got better things to do than sit here. Be seeing you - or maybe not."

 

'Maybe not' is better than 'never', David decides a month after Paris (he hasn't been back since) but it's kind of worse than just 'maybe'. He's never really understood Griffin, but he thought they had something going on, some kind of friendship.

He's been wrong about this sort of thing before, of course, wrong about _people_. He never missed anyone quite the same way he misses Griffin though - it's like all the time, no matter where he goes, he'll find things he wants to share with Griffin, or show him, or make him taste, feel, smell - with Millie, there was always this kind of _pressure_ , this sense of _having to find something new today_ ; with Griffin, they just kind of made things up as they went along. Alone, now, he's kind of lost.

 

"You trying to get yourself killed or something?"

David's spent barely a week in the apartment he's rented in the heart of New York before Griffin pops up, looking annoyed and not really like he's happy to see David again.

"I thought that either you'd find me, or _they_ would," he says. It's kind of true, even if he's rather counted on Griffin finding him first.

Griffin looks around the apartment and scowls some more. "That poster the best you could find?"

"I like it," David says and then, because Griffin's annoyed with him already anyway (and yet here). "Kind of reminded me of you." It's a large version of the first _Marvel Team-Up_ cover.

"Whatever, Spidey."

"It's just nice to have a place of my own, you know," David says. "A real bed. Stuff like that." There are real beds in hotel rooms, too, but it's not the same. They're not _his_.

"Nice to get killed, too, maybe?" Griffin snaps, and like that, he's on the side of the room, slamming David against the wall. "You bleeding idiot, what were you _thinking_? I _told_ you! You can't do shit like this and expect them not to notice!"

"Hey." David considers jumping, then decides he's fine where he is. "Not like you care, is it?"

"What's it going to take to get through that thick skull of yours?" Griffin is beginning to look like he did last time they fought - _really_ fought, not got into some silly argument about where to go next. "I do care, all right? I care a whole lot too fucking much."

David licks his lips - it's a nervous gesture; he doesn't mean anything more by it, but he sees the way Griffin's gaze is drawn to it, to his mouth, and then things kind of slip into place. Why Griffin stuck around with him as long as he did. Why he made such a point of telling David he didn't play well with others, as a rule. Why David's never seen him pick up a girl during the time they spent together.

"Oh," he says, knowing it's a woefully inadequate response to someone telling you they care about you 'a whole lot too fucking much'. "I didn't know."

"Yeah, kind of figured that." Griffin doesn't back down, and he doesn't come any closer.

Clearly, moving will be up to David. "So," he says, "any idea if _they_ 're coming yet?"

"Not a clue," Griffin says. "Came the moment I got your address from the phonebook."

"All right," David says, and _moves_.


End file.
